I’m With Her at Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul (01 Mar 2018)

Tour Dates

Good things often come in threes –

Musically, noteworthy female trios include Dixie Chicks in country, the sisters of Haim in alternative rock, and folk/Americana now has a veritable super group called I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, and Aoife O’Donovan), who recently played a stirring set at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. 

The evening opened with a solo forty-five minutes from Dallas-born, Nashville-based musician Andrew Combs, who charmed with his expressive songs and dry wit.  Combs has supported the likes of Shovels and Rope and Jason Isbell and has a handful of records under his belt, including last year’s Canyons of my Mind, and seems inspired on many songs, by his wife.

Song arrangements were purposely sparse with honest lyrics and a sound that brought back the 60’s/70’s folk country spirit of coffeehouses and local honkytonks.  Joe Henry (not that Joe Henry, but an older songwriter who once collaborated with Sinatra and wrote the lyrics for the Baywatch theme) and Combs came up with ‘Lauralee’ and its falsetto chorus, and ‘Firestarter’ was a brand new song (“not to be confused” with electronic dance band The Prodigy’s 1990s hit, Combs mused wryly).

‘Born without a Clue’ was written the day Tom Petty died, inspired by his succinct songwriting and the set ended with “a creepy song about peeking into someone’s bedroom” but was Combs’ wife’s favorite, ‘Hazel’.

After a break, the ladies of I’m With Her entered for their eighty-minute headlining set, surrounded by stands holding the musical instruments they would pick up and put down as the songs demanded.  Though together since an impromptu 2014 performance, the band’s debut album, See You Around (Rounder Records) has only been out a couple weeks, and the eager audience was treated to live versions of all those songs beginning with the title track, with a few additional covers thrown in for good measure. 

Each of the ladies was very familiar and thankful to be playing at the venue, Watkins a founding member of Nickle Creek, O’Donovan with string quartet Crooked Still, and Jarosz in her own right, and each took turns at lead vocals (i.e. Jarosz on ‘Walkin’ Back to Georgia’), with the trio’s harmonies soaring to the historic theater’s rafters, an ideal venue for their sound.

Musically, each was formidable in their own right, moving from acoustic guitars to electrics to banjos and mandolins, with Watkins also masterful at textures with her violin.  O’Donovan’s vocals lit up ‘Ryland’ which started as delicate as a butterfly then flew confidently with wings by its end.  

After ‘Overland’, the trio huddled around a single mic for an even more stripped-down triptych of songs, starting “with a little gospel” of a  50’s Bill Monroe cover, the haunting harmonies of ‘Wild One’ and the playful, waltz-like fiddle vs. mandolin of instrumental, ‘Waitsfield’.

The band then reconvened back in place with the O’Donovan-led ‘I-89’ as Watkins traded violin for slinky electric guitar followed  by John Hiatt’s ‘Crossing Muddy Waters’, one of the first songs the trio tried together, to discover whether the music chemistry was there or not.  “You have a great public radio voice, Aoife” Watkins mentioned as they tuned up, likely referring that it ran in the family as O’Donovan’s father hosted a Celtic program on-air in Boston. 

“We’re gonna do a real old-timey number for you now” they teased, going into a joyful, vocal-driven version of Adele’s ‘Send My Love (To Your New Lover)’, getting the cadence and lilt inthe chorus nailed perfectly and the main set ended with O’Donovan leading on ‘Game to Lose’. 

The first encore began with the last song on the new record, ‘Hundred Miles’ followed by a foot tap-and-clap acapella cover of Nina Simone’s ‘Be My Husband’ that brought the song to its bare essentials and the standing ovation from the crowd demanded one more.

The second encore brought things back locally as the trio played ‘Today is a Bright New Day’, a 2014 song by Tom Brosseau, a Grand Forks, ND native, ending things hopeful but cautious, with its lyrics, “My eyes are shut tight, I’m not expecting you to appear when I open them, all I wanna do is get away from the lie”. 

Though their band name was temporarily borrowed as a political hashtag, I’m With Her should be more known as a trio of successful independent females, coming together to enrich and expand the world of modern folk/bluegrass/Americana.  Their fans are already numerous and sure to go up with the current tour, and borrowing another recent hashtag, count Me Too.